


Show Me

by Alice_h



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora is there but not really, Angst, Chipped Catra (She-Ra), Gen, Horde Prime's Ship (She-Ra), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, It's not a happy one, Memories, Mind Control, Or at least the build up to it, Reliving the Past, So much angst, you know how this ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:47:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27229822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alice_h/pseuds/Alice_h
Summary: “Don’t struggle now, little sister. You have kept your thoughts and memories in a solitary cell, locked away like a miserable prisoner, and I have liberated them. I have freed them so that we may both find the source of your shadows. What say we fast-forward through the boring bits, hm?” like a videotape, the television in front of her runs through images at speed, accompanied by a high-pitched squeaking – she sees Adora, Shadow Weaver, the Fright Zone – until it settles on another image of Adora, this time in the red dress she wore to the All-Princess Ball, “Ah! Show me Princess Prom, little sister…”Punishing Catra for saving Glimmer, Horde Prime forces her to relive the moments she regrets.
Relationships: Catra & Horde Prime (She-Ra)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	Show Me

**Author's Note:**

> Some days you just erupt in a 5000 word fic! 
> 
> This was inspired by The Secret World mission 'Nightmare in the Dream Palace', and I wondered how it could apply to the moment Prime took control of Catra.
> 
> Couple of warnings - there's some strong thoughts of self-harm, a few moments of mildly graphic imagined/metaphorical violence plus a couple of things that could be read as sexual assault if you think about them.

**Show Me**

Where her own body ends and the pool of green fluid begins, Catra cannot tell. It feels like centuries since her head was last above the water – if it even is water – yet it can’t be longer than a few seconds. The heat of the fluid surrounding her perfectly matches her body temperature; or at least, if she’s still submerged in it, it does. She has long since forced her eyes closed to stop the stinging, so she cannot rely on sight to work out what is happening to her. How she is even alert, she can’t be sure, nor can she tell if she’s breathing. For all she knows, she’s dead, or maybe lying unconscious while Horde Prime does whatever unspeakable act he’s intending on.

“Little sister,” Prime voice booms around her from all directions, startling her to alertness. Catra’s eyes open on reflex, and she finds herself sat on the edge of her bed – not the one on the ship, but the one from the Force Captain barracks back in the Fright Zone. She’s confused, certain this cannot be real; she’s not even sure this place exists anymore, not after what Hordak did. What _she_ made Hordak do.

The room is pitch black, save for the light coming from the static on a television screen in the corner. White snow scattering randomly across the display like a blizzard, whilst a low hum of interference reaches intermittent peaks of noise. She never had a screen in her room, she loved the privacy of not waking up to Hordak’s face barking orders at her, so where was she really? Was this some bizarre punishment Prime was trying to inflict on her for what she did with Glimmer? Catra knows he was angry, _very angry_ – that was why he had his clones manhandle her into that chamber, why he forcefully clamped her arms behind her back and held her head underneath the water until she found herself here. At least she got to tell Adora she was sorry before it all happened.

Her mouth opens, but she doesn’t get to talk. Prime must have known, must have felt her readying herself to question him, and he beats her to it. He speaks commandingly, his tone enough to tell Catra she must stay quiet, “It is a noble sacrifice you made, little sister, but ultimately one of futility. Princess Glimmer, she means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but your Adora, your She-Ra... I could tell her importance to you from the moment her name was first mentioned.”

“She’s… she’s not…” Catra stutters, the light from the television casting her erratic shadow onto the wall beside her. It seems pointless to try and deny that Adora means something to her, he’s already worked that out, but she rejects his assertion out of a need to keep up the lie to herself. If she tells herself she doesn’t care about Adora, if she believes it, then maybe this will be easier.

“You two are close, are you not?”

She shakes her head. It starts off as a way to signal her disagreement, but by the end, Catra is certain she’s trying to shake the memories out of her mind. She doesn’t want to think about how things used to be with Adora, before the sword, before the Rebellion, before all of it. If those memories could leave her, maybe she wouldn’t feel so hesitant about joining Prime to conquer Etheria for good. She wouldn’t think twice about destroying everything Adora knows, everything she loves.

Prime continues on without waiting for her answer, “Being close to others will only bring you pain, little sister. Emotions are unpredictable, erratic… _dangerous._ I say that not as speculation, it is borne from bitter experience. From a darkness of my own, a memory from a distant past.

“I was like you once, more than you realise. No mother, no father, no warmth in my life, nothing to cling to like a child desperately trying to cling to the parent leaving it in an icy wasteland to die. I was alone in shadow, in darkness. Have you ever felt darkness, little sister? I do not mean the mere absence of light, that moment in the dead of night when you wake up from your nightmares and trip over something, probably a knick-knack you bought, desperately hoping it could alleviate the boredom in your monotonous life. I mean true darkness, when existence itself has vanished into the primordial soup of your despair. When life has taken you to a dingy alleyway and thrown you to the floor, pressing down on your neck while you beg it not to hurt you, yet you already know your screams are useless. It will not stop until it has taken what it wants from you. _That,_ little sister, is darkness.”

Though she tries not to give Prime the courtesy of a response, Catra feels her muscles tense at how pertinent his words are to the previous few months of her life. How the euphoria of victory rapidly became the strain of trying to keep herself together in the face of encroaching depression. The way that she saw everything she worked for, every bit of hope she had for the future, laying in ruins around her, taunting her with her failure. If that is true darkness, then she knows it intimately.

Prime sees her reflex, the tiny shudder of agreement, and he knows exactly what it means, “You’re in darkness now, are you not? Do you feel it creeping up on you? Do you not pray at night for it all to go away? You see how it makes you vulnerable, it makes you the lonely worker ant crossing the patch of dirt where a red-faced kid with grazed knees stands ready with a magnifying glass. We walk into the bright spot, enticed by the light and hoping that the warmth will be pleasant. That is who Adora is to you, little sister, she is your bright spot. You think that basking in her rays will bring you pleasure. But the longer you stay in her warmth, the more it hurts. Your skin is blistering, Catra! You can smell your flesh charring with Adora’s heat! It’s painful, it’s unbearable! Adora is burning you to death and you are letting it happen!”

Catra cowers as his voice raises to a yell. She still can’t see him, yet she feels completely surrounded by his presence, as though the empty room in which she sits is packed with people. Prime is right, Adora has caused her nothing but pain ever since she found that sword, and maybe she _is_ at fault for allowing it. She wants to be with Adora – of course she does, she always did – but how much pain will she let the girl put her through to get what she wants?

“Let me take you from the darkness, little sister,” Prime is calm again, his disarming tone returning once more. He has the same undercurrent of malice as always, but she can detect something more genuine this time, “I will bring you into the light, away from this pain. But you must do something for me. You must let me stare into your soul. I am no voyeur, little sister, I can look through thousands of sets of eyes, but yours… yours are the eyes I must borrow for this. Allow me to see everything, lay yourself bare in front of me and I shall examine you in detail. Every peak, every nadir, every little blemish that lingers on your skin, remnants of scars from your past. I must see it all to help you.”

Prime doesn’t wait for an answer, and though she cannot see or feel any intrusion, Catra suddenly feels an extra consciousness alongside her own. It is a thief breaking in, picking at memories, forcing open doors she had long since shut and rifling through every part of her. It’s at once terrifying and reassuring, and she’s unsure if she should welcome the trespass. The television screen static begins to fade into a picture, an image of a young Adora, and she wants to close her eyes. She wants to block it out. But even with effort that borders on painful, Catra cannot get her eyelids to close; she cannot look away.

“Don’t struggle now, little sister. You have kept your thoughts and memories in a solitary cell, locked away like a miserable prisoner, and I have liberated them. I have freed them so that we may both find the source of your shadows. What say we fast-forward through the boring bits, hm?” like a videotape, the television runs through images at speed, accompanied by a high-pitched squeaking – she sees Adora, Shadow Weaver, the Fright Zone – until it settles on another image of Adora, this time in the red dress she wore to the All-Princess Ball, “Ah! Show me Princess Prom, little sister…”

Catra is momentarily blinded as the dark room dissolves into the bright lighting and a loud mechanical noise peters out into the music of the event. No longer sitting on a bed, she is now stood upright, even wearing the same suit. Crowds rush around her, and she knows exactly which moment she has been returned to. The first bars of music play, and she’s forced towards Adora. Back then, she felt self-confidence, determination, but this time there is only grief and pain. They dance, Catra’s own pithy words coming unconsciously from her mouth again as she teases Adora. She remembers how this moment served only to fuel her yearning for the girl, how she couldn’t rid herself of the thought of the feeling of Adora in her arms for months. One last dance, she thinks to herself, knowing she will never get this chance again. She will never touch Adora again.

“Maybe my plan won’t work,” she doesn’t want to say these words, doesn’t want to relive the pleasure she felt at having her own body pressed against Adora’s, and how it only encouraged her to want her more. But Prime gives her no choice, even if she tried to close her mouth, her memory would reopen it for her, “But then again… maybe it already has.”

Catra finds herself staring at Adora’s lips for longer than she remembers doing the first time around. Would things have ended differently if she had just listened to the screaming urge inside herself and kissed Adora? Could she have avoided the pain, or would it just have created more? She doesn’t imagine that Adora would have returned to the Horde with her, nor that Sparkles and Arrow Boy would have welcomed her to the pretty princess castle with arms wide open. But then again, she wonders, would that have given her fewer regrets than the reality?

“You wanted her, didn’t you, little sister?” Prime’s voice snaps her from her thoughts, “You wished to be close, but you know how that ends, don’t you? With pain, with darkness, with your emotions fighting one another in a pointless battle where you will be the only loser. But let us not dwell on what could have been, let’s find another moment.”

The ballroom surrounding her freezes, and Catra sees it become a giant screen inches from her face. Once again, Prime fast-forwards through images of her life that flash before her. Falling from the cliff, flying off back to the Fright Zone with Adora’s friends, giving her the sword… all of it reminds her of Adora. Of how things weren’t so bad, even though they found themselves on opposing sides of a war. She did some dreadful things then, she won’t deny that, but these things now seemed to be wholly inane compared to what she would go on to do.

The pictures stop when they reach what Adora called the ‘Crystal Castle’, though it was more like a house of horror to Catra’s mind. From the moment she stepped inside, it had tried to kill her in numerous ways, not to mention the way it drew from her memories to torture her with the past. Not unlike Prime was doing now.

“Now, little sister, show me the Beacon…”

She hears Adora’s shouts before she can see her, surrounded by the spiders that the building had sent to kill them and desperately trying to fight them off. This moment, painfully etched in Catra’s mind, is one she cannot live through again, it would be too much. If there was any part of her that had untempered regrets, it was from this day, and what she knew was about to happen.

But maybe, Catra wonders, maybe she can change this. If this was some kind of test Prime was putting her through, some way of giving her the opportunity to right the wrongs of her past, she can show him that she’s changed. She can make up for the things that shame her. Drawing on the confidence that thought spurred into her, Catra springs into action, helping Adora fight. With her agility, she’s able to effortlessly jump across the creatures towards her goal – the sword. It’s laying on the ground beside the cliff edge that Adora… _no,_ she’s not thinking about that now. There’s some weird green gunk gluing it to the floor, but Catra’s claws make light work of it, and she frees it with ease.

“Adora!” she calls, and their eyes momentarily meet. She throws the sword towards her friend… enemy? What even _were_ they now?... and Adora hastily raises it up and yells out the words that transform her into-

“NO! NO! NO!” the scene pauses, and Horde Prime startles Catra with his shouts, “Is that really how you remember this, little sister? I asked you to show me what happened, not insult me with your feeble attempts to play hero. Show me the Beacon.”

The world around Catra starts to rewind, taking her back to the start of this strange episode of her life and she feels the despair stronger than ever. The tiny speck of hope that she would not have to see what happened has been crushed by Prime’s insistence that he see everything and it breaks what remains of her heart. She feels as though she’s on autopilot as the scene plays out in the memory she had buried deep, confident she would never have to revisit. If anything, it’s more painful the second time around: Adora’s desperate pleading with Light Hope as she’s suspended over the bottomless chasm, the look of relief on Adora’s face when she sees Catra.

Maybe that was the worst part. Adora’s smile. It tells Catra just as much now as it did back then that Adora still believed in her, she genuinely thought she would help her up and not condemn her to the unknown. Adora hadn’t given up on her, not even after everything Catra had done, and what did she do? She let her fall. She took the trust, the confidence and threw it away like it was nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Adora’s fraught cries rattle through her like a bitter wind, “I never meant to make you feel like you were second best. Please don’t do this!”

_I don’t want to_ , Catra’s mind screams, _I don’t want to let you go again, Adora._ But there is little she can do to change it. Prime will not let her deviate from what happened, won’t let her stay silent or stop Adora from falling. She may have told Adora at the battle of Bright Moon that she didn’t think it would have been that easy to defeat her, but that was a lie. Catra vividly recalls the walk back to the Fright Zone, certain that she had just killed Adora in a spontaneous fit of revenge. It wasn’t something she planned, nor something she ever wanted to do, but something about that place, the way it preyed upon her memory, triggered something inside her. It made her hate Adora, just for those few, fateful minutes. But that was all it took.

There are tears in Catra’s eyes as the scene freezes in front of her, the echo of Adora’s screams still ringing in her ears. And she knows there is worse to come, that was far from the end of the awful things she had done. She says a silent prayer, begging some higher being for this to be over, but she has forgotten Prime is in her mind. He is the only God who hears it.

“Now, now, little sister, this is no time to stop. We have so much more to see. All these things that Adora made you do.”

“She didn’t…” Catra’s breath hitches unexpectedly. She’s not quite crying now, but her breathing is not as steady as it should be, and it surprises her to hear it, “She didn’t make me…”

“Oh, but she did, little sister. Don’t you see? This is what I have been trying to tell you, she mires your mind in agonising emotion. How can you act with clarity when Adora is confusing you like that? I can free you from it. But first, let us continue… show me the Crimson Waste.”

It’s Scorpia’s face that appears in front of her this time, alongside a background cacophony of cheers and celebrations of the gang she once led, “Catra? You okay?”

The feelings rush to her consciousness before the memory does. The moment when Adora told her Shadow Weaver was in Bright Moon and it felt like her world had stopped. She had a sliver of happiness out there, some kind of future, albeit with Scorpia rather than Adora, and that one sentence, that tiny little piece of information that Shadow Weaver went to Adora, tore it away from her. But, she tells herself, that wasn’t anything that Adora had done – she didn’t know Catra had no idea where Shadow Weaver had escaped to.

“This wasn’t her fault!” she pleads with Prime as she walks away from the noise of the party, desperate for him to stop this before she can see what happens after, “Shadow Weaver is the one to blame for this!”

“Was Adora not her favourite?” he dismisses with confidence. He knows the battle is already won, he had taken Catra’s body the moment she was submerged into the pool, but her will was going to take a little more to overcome. Love is a peculiar thing, he ponders, it embeds itself into one’s being and the stronger it gets, the harder it is to remove. It was clear to him from the first time he met Catra that her love for Adora was strong enough to need such extreme measures to extract from her spirit, yet she wasn’t conscious of it. She didn’t know she loved Adora, and that, in some ways, can be far more dangerous an opponent than a declared love.

“Was Adora not the one who gained Shadow Weaver’s affection, little sister? The one who took every bit of praise for herself while you were left to what… to put-downs, to neglect, to torture? Look as deep inside yourself as I am, little sister, and you will see the truth. Adora was complicit, and she knew exactly what she was doing.”

Catra knows the next part isn’t something she wants to go through again. She’s kept it a secret even from Scorpia, because how could anyone ever respect a Force Captain who succumbs to this sort of weakness? The Horde had little tolerance for physical weakness, and even less for psychological fragility. Now Prime was going to watch her run off into an empty room, the dull blue light of the ship her only company for this ordeal. He was going to stare as she falls to the floor, head in her hands and struggling for breath.

“No, no, no…” she gasps, desperate to maintain her composure as the anxiety sets in. Catra’s not even sure now whether she’s feeling this about exposing her deepest secrets to Prime or whether it’s for the same reasons when she went through this for real, but she tries her hardest to stand, to escape the thoughts rushing to her mind again.

She stares down at the exposed claws on her hands, recalling how she felt relief looking at them, how they were going to take away the pain in her mind with an entirely different form of pain. She remembers the unstoppable cascade of thoughts, and the one that she kept returning to, the one that drove her on. _Shadow Weaver wants me to hurt, she wants me to feel every bit of pain. I’m going to give her what she wants, I will hurt and it’s going to be her fault._ The muscles in her hand tighten as it homes in on the opposite forearm, and she implores herself not to do this. Not again.

Everything freezes, the sharp point of a claw millimetres from skin, and she’s almost thankful for Prime’s interruption, “Oh, little sister. How distraught Adora must have made you to turn you onto self-destruction. Is it not clear what she does to you? That she would willingly push you to draw your own blood to free your mind of what she has done to it, it hurts me to see, little sister, it truly does. But come, we must see more. I like this next part.”

Once again stood in front of a screen, more of Catra’s memories flicker past her like a carousel, the snapshots she can pick out fuelling her guilt more than before: returning to Hordak and demanding he open the portal, staring hatefully into Adora’s eyes as she throws the switch, Entrapta…

“Show me the portal, little sister,” there’s no interpreting this as a suggestion, Prime is ordering her to revisit this memory. She knows there’s a finality to what she did in the portal, that it was the last straw for Adora, and it scares her what she might see here again.

A shock of pain crackles agonisingly through her right side as the void bonds to her again. She recalls how it felt last time, that sensation of her body constantly teetering on the edge of an abyss, and the way that the corruption felt more alive than the rest of her. It flowed constantly, a current of darkness coursing haphazardly under her skin. It made her less of a creature, less a conscious being, taking part of who she was and erasing it with unbridled chaos.

And it hurt. Gods, how it hurt. It felt like millions of tiny needles stabbing her over and over, relentlessly piercing skin, digging down through flesh and blood to inject their poison deep inside. It was constant agony, taking her past the limit of what she could deal with, beyond any level of pain she could put words to. She remembers how she pleaded with the void to stop, and the void spoke back, claiming her body for itself and almost rendering her a passenger inside the shell of who she was. It took her mind, too, turning her to revenge. Revenge on those who said she wouldn’t succeed, revenge on a world that took every opportunity to keep her down, revenge on Adora.

She’s sure she’s more in control now, but the corruption still lingers in a corner of her brain – it always had. The portal reality may have been destroyed, but ever since it happened, there had been something in the darkest corners of her mind, something she feared. It tinged her thoughts and her actions with the same distortion that had taken her over inside the portal and she had no idea how to stop it.

Adora’s on her knees in front of her, distraught from the loss of her friends, and Catra knows this is the point at which Adora lost that last sliver of hope she had in her. She remembers desperately wanting to run away with Adora, to stay in that alternate reality and be happy, but the void wouldn’t allow it. She felt the nothingness calling to her from the first moment she awoke there, quietly at first, but it grew. By the time Adora had taken her away on that skiff, it was screaming at her, begging her to join it, to let it become one with her. That was why she fought against Adora, why she gave up. Why she let herself fall.

“Hey Adora,” Catra talks and the void talks with her. She remembers the battle with the spreading corruption, the desperate attempts to keep it from overwhelming her and the uneasy equilibrium they had reached by the time she had made it here. By Catra’s own hand, Adora is thrown backwards, and she kneels astride her, the corruption singing into her ears with dark ideas.

She vividly recalls how it fed her lines, how the venom she spat at Adora was the void feeding on her feelings, how it took over her consciousness with the desire – the need, even – to lash out at her. The corruption made her want to destroy Adora, it told her that enough was enough: no more leaving her to die on illusory cliffs, no more discs that could stop her becoming She-Ra, no more pussyfooting around hoping that things would change. She was imbued with pure sadism, determination to put a stop to everything that haunted her.

But if it was the void back then, what is giving her that same urge now? It may just be an illusion of Adora in front of her, a memory, but why is she still readying to attack? She has the same desire to slash and slash at the body underneath her, to reduce Adora’s pristine face to a mess of deep gashes, to claw at Adora’s throat until she no longer has the breath to plead for mercy. She wants Adora gone from her mind and she desperately needs it to happen now before she can no longer fight her own thoughts. Before she does something she knows will haunt her for life.

The words of the void return, speaking this time with Prime’s voice, “I can free you, little sister, I am the light that shatters all darkness. Adora brings you confusion, pain and it hurts me to see how she has made you suffer. How she _still_ makes you suffer. Allow me into you, allow me to take that suffering from you, and I will allow you into me.”

Everything fades to black, and Catra once again finds herself in the dark bedroom, the television returned and lighting her with static. She’s shaken from experiencing those memories again, but there’s a comfort that she didn’t have before, a light in the darkness that has taken the form of Horde Prime.

“I… I…” she stutters, the words struggling to come forth. In the end, she can only beg for his respite, “Please.”

Prime’s laugh is jovial, celebratory even, in Catra’s eyes. Where once she would have heard the sinister undertone, she is no longer second-guessing his motives. In her desperation, she has cast aside her misgivings about him, freed herself of the turmoil that Adora brought to her. For the first time in her life, she feels she has a chance at peace. A sudden light blinds her, and she gasps for breath, coughing up the green fluid that she had been submerged in. Though it’s too bright for her to open her eyes, Catra notices first how cold she is, the air on bare, wet skin making her shiver as she frantically clears her lungs.

“Brothers!” Prime thunders, sending the room into a deathly silence, “Behold the purest among us, our little sister. She lies before us all, finally free of darkness!”

Hundreds of clones around her begin to chant, and she starts feeling a sense of belonging. Sitting upright to rapturous cheering, her eyes begin to adjust to the light and Catra notices she is entirely naked, yet she has no shame. In fact, there is a freedom in the vulnerability of being nude, as though cementing the fact that she is being reborn in Prime’s image; that she has cast off even the clothes from her old life of shadow and is now starting her life again with nothing but Prime’s light.

A hand helps her to her feet, and she grips onto it tightly. Catra traces her gaze up the arm to see Horde Prime looking at her with the same love in his expression as she has in hers. She feels overcome with gratefulness, a knowledge that she could never thank him enough for what he has done for her. Twenty-one years of life, and all she had known was the creeping shadow in her mind, one that had made her existence increasingly unbearable. But Prime had seen past that, opened her eyes to its true cause – Adora – and liberated her from it.

“Thank you,” she whispers, hearing relief in her own voice for the first time she can remember, “I’ve never had this sensation of calm before, it’s like... I’m not worried about anything now. I feel like myself again.”

Prime smiles strangely, the warmth turning to an irritated grimace within a split second, “Like _your_ self, little sister? Did I not make it clear that when you become a part of me, I become a part of you? I have no need for _your_ self, do you understand?”

“W… what do you m-mean?” Catra falters, her momentary peace fading under a wave of concern that she had made a grave mistake. She suddenly becomes aware of something on the back of her neck, and reaches her hand behind to try and feel for it, “W-what is… what have you…?”

There’s some kind of metallic device attached to her, and the more she moves, the more she struggles to feel for it, Catra comes to the realisation that it is not simply an accessory. It reaches deep inside, it’s becoming a part of her, and it buzzes with power. His power. She can sense Horde Prime inside her, her eyes widening with the growing knowledge that her mind and body are no longer her own.

“It is time for you to come into the light, little sister.”

Prime snaps his fingers, and Catra’s agitated stuttering reaches an abrupt end. Finally, she feels peace.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, let me know in the comments. There will be more 'No Miracles' very soon.
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr @lisshstuff or twitter @alice_hancock1


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